War of Rage (7)
War of Rage (7)
"Captain. Shouldn't we be getting ready to bolt soon?"
"You idiot. If not now, when else are we going to get a chance to run wild like this? When opportunity comes, you've got to grab as much as you can."
"That's true, but... Huh? What are you doing right now?"
The swaggering mercenary company captain's expression stiffened, and he suddenly mounted his horse.
"Hyah!"
"Captain! Captain! Where are you going?!"
And as he bolted off at full speed, his men were all thrown into confusion. The reason their captain had dashed away became clear soon enough.
"Sweep the bandits away!"
Nearly a hundred cavalrymen were charging in, composite bows aimed.
"Ambush! It's an ambush!"
"You bastard of a captain! You son of a bitch!"
Having been scattered and now abandoned by their captain, the mercenaries were swept away without putting up any resistance.
Even if they tried to flee, they would only be showing their backs to the tribal cavalry. They were reduced to nothing more than satisfying prey.
"Hoo. I truly do favor the east. Wherever you look, you can see the horizon, and the ground is just soft enough to make for a pleasant ride."
After the mopping-up was finished, Rex cast a meaningful glance toward Eugene.
"Wouldn't it be magnificent if we turned it all into pasture?"
"Can you not see the color of the soil here?"
Eugene let out a dry laugh at Rex's inspired idea of turning fertile black soil into pasture.
"Wouldn't that just make even tastier grass grow all the more thickly?"
"Enough joking. Send recall messages to the cavalry units in the other regions as well. The bandit sweeps have done enough by now. The supply route is secure, so we need to focus on the coming pitched battle."
"Understood."
Direct supply from the Wandering Castle had now become possible.
While receiving the materials stockpiled in the castle, they had also been sending back the spoils they had seized while rampaging through the west and central regions.
The heretical scripture to offer to Vanas, the Tyrant's heart for Cassandra to use, the magical armor obtained from the Dullahan.
These were difficult to handle immediately, so they needed to be safely stored away until the war was over.
"Once the horse-feed problem was solved, everything got easier at once."
Haind's eyes darted like rolling glass beads as he entered figures into the supply ledger.
He was first-rate as a knight, and true to his merchant-family origins, he also had considerable talent for calculation and supply management.
-Sir Knight. I have a chronic ailment: I can count the sheep on the steppe just fine, but I cannot count figures on paper. Please, take those dreadful scrolls away.
Rex included, every one of the tribal knights was terrified of this sort of work.
"The reorganization of the distribution plan is complete. We can proceed as is until the next supply delivery."
"Good work."
Eugene would formulate the distribution plan from a macro perspective, and Haind's role was to fill in the gaps.
The tribal merchants accompanying the army were serving as quartermasters, but there were also tasks they could not assist with.
Only a close aide who heard all the confidential information at Eugene's side and took part in a wide range of discussions could coordinate logistics with the future in mind.
"It is fortunate that the north has clarified its stance."
"I had hoped to request reinforcements and impose a two-front war on them, but it's a shame. They've only just finished putting down a family dispute themselves, so they're in disarray."
Earl Constantine, the newly appointed administrator of the north, had sent a letter asking for cordial relations. Along with oatmeal powder, the northern-style field ration.
It happened to be lunchtime, so everyone was trying it, and true to its reputation as notoriously tasteless porridge, the reactions were far from good.
"After we crush that Kruger bastard, let's conquer the north too!"
They were spouting lines that sounded like jokes with expressions as serious as if they were speaking earnestly.
"It tastes bad because you mixed it with plain water. Everyone, try eating it like this."
When Eugene mixed in sheep's milk, lard, salt, and a little spice and handed it over, the reactions reversed completely.
It must have been quite decent, as only the soft clatter of bowls quietly echoed. It was a luxury they could enjoy because they were marching alongside livestock.
Just then, a commotion arose outside.
"Hey! This is a restricted area. The spot for outside merchants is over there."
"Oh, my apologies, good sirs."
A camp merchant who had come from the west bowed and scraped before the soldiers. His appearance was disheveled and his face deeply troubled, as if he had suffered some mishap during trade.
"Who are those people?"
"They were shipwrecked while out trading. They are trying to at least dispose of the goods they barely managed to salvage. Those who still lack funds are accompanying the army as laborers."
Haind, who dealt with camp merchants often, answered immediately.
"That's terribly unlucky. But if they were trading, why are they coming from the west?"
Most of Britannia's trade was conducted with the south or east. Gord, Barsia, and the petty kingdoms facing the sea were their main customers.
"They say there is a snow country beyond the sea northwest of Britannia. More than eighty percent of the land is frozen solid, but there is a city at its lowest edge, and they trade with it. Various furs are the specialty products, I hear."
"Eighty percent of the land is ice?"
"Do people truly live in such a place?"
The tribal knights who had lived only on the steppes wore faces of disbelief.
"Oh."
"Lord of the Castle. Surely you are not thinking of going there as well?"
"Why? Is seeing the world not enjoyable? You all were delighted every time we went to Samur or Sicily."
"Falling into a snowfield is an entirely different matter."
For the dark elves, a nomadic people, the snowy tundra was no different from hell in the human world.
"Homi would probably like it, though."
"...That's a low blow, my lord."
Kingdom's End belonged to the warm southern region, so it was hard to see snow even in winter.
But whenever snow did fall on the rare occasion, Homi would be beside herself with joy. She would grab Eugene's hand, rush outside, and roll around in the snow.
"Hahahaha!"
"Ahaha!"
Everyone's gaze turned toward the boulder from which the sound of children's laughter was coming. There, Homi, dressed in athletic attire, was playing with the children the camp merchants had brought along.
The world being what it was, it was not difficult to see children on the battlefield.
There were plenty of places to put them to use—running minor errands for soldiers, gathering fallen branches for firewood, doing odd jobs for the merchant company.
They were either the merchants' own children, or orphans who had lost their parents and were taken in for work.
A boy who had been bouncing around to loosen up his body lay prone on the boulder and propped up his right arm.
Swish.
A long, thick tail coiled twice around that hand. The boy's face slackened into a grin at the soft texture and fragrant scent.
"Hey. Get a hold of yourself."
Only after a nearby girl scolded him did he fix his expression and put strength into his arm.
"Hyaaaat!"
"Heh."
But the tail did not budge an inch.
"Hrrryaaap!!"
"Hehehe."
Even though he exerted himself until his face turned bright red, he ultimately lost the arm-wrestling match.
"Aww."
It seemed to have been a prize wagered on the match, for everyone looked dejected as they gazed at the white bread piled in the basket.
But Homi had intended to give it to them from the start, win or lose. When she smiled kindly and handed over the basket, blossoms of laughter bloomed among the children.
It was a heartwarming scene, hard to believe of an army on the eve of war.
* * *
Conversely, the Central Army was in a grim mood. In terms of results, they had plundered plenty and won several substantial victories, but there was little cause to celebrate.
There were impious bastards coming from the west who dared to pursue them. The central nobles, who had always been the ones doing the pursuing, found it utterly infuriating.
But these pursuers were no ordinary tough opponents. Every time they themselves achieved a success, the pursuing army poured cold water on it by achieving successes several times greater.
"My son has been captured."
King Kruger's murmur brought tension to the banquet. Unlike his faint-hearted firstborn, he was fond of his second son, a fine knight.
-You take after your mother so very much.
The gentle warmth of his wife, who had died young. Glimpses of that quality often appeared in Kray's leadership.
Whenever that happened, the smile King Kruger wore contained a fragment of warmth. To a degree one could scarcely believe belonged to a cruel tyrant.
"From what the rumors say, he does not seem to be treated as a prisoner. He is being treated lavishly, and he is even still wearing his armor..."
"Are you saying my son has betrayed me, then?"
"Ah, I, I apologize!"
At the king's low but weighty voice, the vassal bowed his head.
"Tch."
The king, who had been staring wordlessly, clicked his tongue.
"The battles I have fought through, large and small, number over two hundred."
"Is there any other king who has fought more battles than Your Majesty?"
A vassal answered at once. He looked as though he would have cursed his own parents if it would lighten the oppressive mood.
"I have not always been victorious. I have been defeated many times as well. There were also enemies who insulted me."
"But did you not always redeem yourself with even greater successes in the battles that followed?"
When King Kruger raised his horn cup, the nearby nobles drank as well.
Tyrant though he was, the king did not usually care for empty flattery. These days, however, he needed this kind of flattery just to get the liquor down.
And it was not untrue, either. Redeeming defeat with an even greater victory. That was also the secret to how King Kruger had come to possess the finest skill in crafting blood eagles.
The sight of mouths that had once insulted him begging for death was a reward as joyous as victory itself.
"But this time is different. If we lose this time, there will be no next. The army chasing us now is that kind of foe. Do you understand what I am trying to say?"
"All of us, in life, shall enjoy wealth and glory beneath Your Majesty, and in death, shall enjoy the glory of Valhalla in the embrace of the gods."
"The wisdom of our ancestors is with us, so we can surely achieve victory."
Having come this far with him, the vassals here were the real thing, both in martial strength and loyalty.
"Be at ease, Great Chieftain. You have only to trust in us."
"What is there to worry about? Feeble land warriors will all be split apart before the axes of the sea."
The Viking chieftains, who had wolfed down their food greedily, thumped their chests.
"Such insolence..."
King Kruger restrained the vassal who was about to step forward. Pressuring men who had no concept of kingship to address him as "Your Majesty" would only spoil the mood. In any case, as warriors, their capability was trustworthy.
"I noticed there was a shaman preparing Tears of the Fanatic on my way over."
At one chieftain's question, King Kruger nodded.
"We cannot afford the slightest complacency in this battle."
"Even so, isn't this far too excessive?"
Just as the civilized nations had produced guardians known as knights, the Vikings too had their own secret weapon.
A decisive battle instrument forged by blending their violence and folk religion. The berserker.
The 'wisdom of the ancestors' mentioned by a certain vassal earlier when they toasted had been about deploying the berserkers.
It was a forbidden secret art that could temporarily turn even an ordinary warrior into a monster rivaling a knight.
As such, the side effects were equally great, and it was difficult to deploy them according to military discipline, so it was rare to see them in actual use. That was how much Kruger had staked his very survival on this contest.
"Leave the vanguard to us. Once the beasts' howling begins to blanket the battlefield, nothing but screams will fill the air. Before that, I shall announce my name and my house before our foes."
"Do as you please."
"But, Your Majesty. The operation we already established..."
King Kruger raised a hand and once again blocked his vassal's speech.
By Britannia's standards, this was a relationship between a king and savage chieftains, but by Viking standards, it was a relationship of equal chieftain to chieftain.
Just as the nobles individually exercised command over the forces they had brought and ran rampant, so too did the Viking chieftains have no obligation to receive anyone's orders.
Even addressing him now as the Great Chieftain was, in its own way, a tremendous concession. For by blood, the Kruger family had not been a particularly noble clan in the Viking homeland.
"This land is so warm, it's truly good. Everywhere you turn is green."
"Except the stink of cow dung is awful. Everywhere you go, why is there such a damned stench of dung."
"But the women have so little hair on their bodies, isn't that nice?"
"I'll grant you, that part is absolutely fantastic!"
The vassals frowned at the sight of them chuckling heartily, casting aside their cups and spouting such coarse talk.
The fact that these men were not simply one-time hired troops—that they would take root in the east and become neighboring nobles they would have to face in the future—was dreadful.
But everyone acknowledged one truth: without them, there would be no victory.
* * *
"Every last one of the plundering Vikings has reportedly joined King Kruger's army!"
Even in the face of this rather menacing report, Eugene and those on campaign with him were not shaken.
For they had gone on a traveling tour across Britannia, winning battle after battle, and their morale pierced the heavens.
Moreover, these were not ordinary victories from ordinary battles; each one was a tale of valor they could tell over drinks for the rest of their lives after returning to their villages.
'This is a winnable fight.'
'Even if we lose, the opponent will likewise receive a devastating blow and come to the negotiating table.'
With both those convictions solidly held, everyone turned their attention to lighter concerns instead.
Since Eugene would see to the matter of 'how' they won, they waged a war of nerves over 'where' they would win.
"Letting my horsemanship rot is a waste. I rightly ought to stand at the head."
"Who gets to decide such things on their own whim?"
"We cannot set the face of this glorious grand army as infantry, now can we? If you have a complaint, you should have learned to ride well."
"Our enemies are the louts from the central region, so what does it matter if you can't ride a damned horse! Their vanguard will obviously come charging on foot too!"
This childish squabbling had erupted when Eugene announced he would forgo the honor of the vanguard and concentrate on command.
A pitched battle between forces of this scale was a first even for Eugene.
'I have Might and the elite cavalry, so I can intervene at any critical moment. So...'
Rather than rampaging with a common soldier's bravery from the start, he had to read and orchestrate the entire battlefield as commander-in-chief.
"Have those bastards already forgotten they lost four times in a row to Kray's knights?"
Rex was baffled as he watched the southern nobles brazenly crying out here and there.
Rex disliked watching men who would all run the moment Eugene's main force disappeared strutting around on borrowed authority.
"Don't look at them so harshly. They have to make a living too."
Eugene himself possessed a supreme trading city like Haven, and Baron Lester had a salt mine in his territory, so they handled large sums of money.
The other lords had no choice but to live off their land. But how much could taxes paid in barley, beans, or wheat really amount to? It was impossible to cover a noble's expenses with that alone.
Even owning a small fief put one in a relatively good position. Some had nothing at all beyond their noble status and armor.
In the end, the answer was war. Dangerous as it was, it was hard to find an opportunity for a higher income than this.
Naturally, the more merit they earned in battle, and the more they caught the eye of Eugene as the commander-in-chief, the more they stood to gain.
"Indeed. Before you, Sir Knight, rose to command, they probably never dared to even dream of such chances. They would have only ever been beaten down day after day by the central louts and the pirate bastards."
"It seems they've truly gotten on your bad side. Still, they are family of a sort, so please, be a little generous. After all, don't they fill the headcount well?"
"You are too generous, Sir Knight."
The nobles' topic of conversation had shifted to something else.
Besides the vanguard of battle, there were positions like the mobile strike force to raid supply units, or the reserve force that, while difficult to earn merit in, was desirable because it suffered few casualties.
"How dare you raise your voice here? Do not forget you stand before the Countess."
"Ah, no, what I meant was..."
Thanks to Varda stepping forward to hear out the nobles in his stead, Eugene was able to catch a breather.
Beautiful while possessing both refinement and charisma, she skillfully handled the nobles who had swarmed in like starving puppies.
As the Sage of the Emerald Forest, the Elven Princess, and the Lady of House Meyer—all three noble identities embodied in one person—she was a steadfast political companion.
She gave him perfect support as his wife, allowing Eugene to focus entirely on his struggle for supremacy against external foes.
'The tribal elders who kept badgering me about when I would marry were such a nuisance then, but looking back, they had remarkable foresight.'
Indeed, it was right that a monarch have a household.
"Pardon me, I was late in joining because of a chronic illness. Please, I beg you to accept these goods and put in a good word for me with His Excellency..."
A noble who had watched for the right moment and belatedly joined the campaign placed a chest full of silver coins before Varda.
"I have certainly received your goodwill. I will speak well of you to the head of the house, so do not worry too much."
"Thank you! I shall serve you with all my loyalty henceforth!"
Varda also functioned superbly as a communication conduit for nobles who found it burdensome to speak directly to Eugene. For Eugene as well, receiving bribes through his wife was more convenient in many ways than accepting them openly.
And one more thing. Varda's existence was convenient even for receiving surrenders.
"My master wishes to change his banner. If only you will accept him, he shall pledge his loyalty."
An envoy who had met them in a secret chamber, avoiding the eyes of others, knelt.
"We have been too long trapped under the tyranny of a tyrant. My master has always spoken of an honorable lord whom he truly ought to serve."
Nobles who realized the war situation was poor and wished to change sides needed a justification.
'It looks like we'll be ruined if we stay under Kruger, so we're betraying him quickly!'
'We still hold loyalty in our hearts to the elven royal family that once ruled this land. Now that the princess has returned, we must rightly observe our ancestors' oath.'
Even when switching sides the same way, the latter naturally looked far better in the eyes of others. Varda's existence provided a very convenient excuse for those who wished to surrender.
After stating his intention to surrender in a few lines, the envoy then spent nearly five times as much extolling Varda's beauty and nobility.
"Thank you for the praise. Truly, you serve a lord who knows honor."
"I am merely grateful that you recognize it, Your Excellency."
When the envoy withdrew, Varda leaned her head against Eugene's shoulder.
"Has the royal family now become nothing but a convenient pretext?"
"Shall I tell that insolent wretch to get lost at once?"
"I could not do that. Is it not a blessing that came seeking you?"
Varda shook her head, bearing a wistful smile. Her hair, like threads of gold, tickled Eugene's shoulder and neck.
"Use me as you will. This poor woman who has nothing to offer but honor and her own body."
"So that's the act for today. You naughty elven princess."
"Eek! N-no tickling!"
When Eugene tickled her armpits, Varda was horrified.
She was peculiarly vulnerable to tickling. If Eugene so much as scratched the soles of her feet in bed, she would convulse to the point she could hardly breathe.
"Enough of this mischief! What will you answer to the surrender just now?"
"We accept it."
Eugene answered immediately.
"Are you not suspicious? It might not be a trap, but that person could be trying to gather intelligence on us."
Moreover, the other party had not even revealed their name. This was because surrenders before a battle took many forms by their very nature.
One method was to offer fragmented information as a kind of down payment, then, if the other side responded favorably, produce further results and formally join them.
"It is the first surrender of a central noble. Beyond that one, there are surely many others who are wavering. If we reject them outright from the start, the others will give up on surrender too."
"That is true."
"It need not necessarily be a sincere surrender. If it can further shake the hearts of the central nobles who are now wavering, that alone is sufficient."
Eugene sent word to the envoy that he would accept the surrender. However, this surrender carried a significance far greater than Eugene had imagined.
"Truly? His Excellency Meyer was satisfied?"
"Yes! My lord! Now you need only wait for the right opportunity."
Baron Bout, who had requested defection, was not merely some commander serving in King Kruger's army.
He was the one guarding a fortress to the rear—the very stronghold that would serve as a fallback point for the central army to retreat and reorganize should the worst happen.
Baron Bout rubbed his hands together and stared outside the castle walls. Even now, supply wagons were busily coming and going from Kruger's military encampment.
Now, only a single day's distance remained between Eugene's army and Kruger's.
Though a peaceful horizon lay between them, the military atmosphere, tension, and fear made each army keenly aware of the other's presence.
End
ⓒ Gusojae#1wecx